


even failures can amount to something

by whalers



Series: for what binds us [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Child Death, Gen, Mentions of Drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 04:49:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11097240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalers/pseuds/whalers
Summary: There’s been too many failures this year, enough that the overseers decide it’s much easier to drown the failures in the river near the Abbey. They toss the boys into the river where the hagfish eagerly await near the surface, pointed teeth like fangs already ripping apart small feet, tearing at clothes.Aeolos watches it all, murky eyes wide, precariously perched on a wide plank of wood, careful not to hold onto the sides lest his fingers get nibbled off as well. The water turns black quickly.; a young boy's life, uprooted, turned inside-out, before he meets a man that offers to change his world.





	even failures can amount to something

There’s been too many failures this year, enough that the overseers decide it’s much easier to drown the failures in the river near the Abbey. They toss the boys into the river where the hagfish eagerly await near the surface, pointed teeth like fangs already ripping apart small feet, tearing at clothes.

Aeolos watches it all, murky eyes wide, precariously perched on a wide plank of wood, careful not to hold onto the sides lest his fingers get nibbled off as well. The water turns black quickly. The screams of the other boys are all he hears, their flailing bodies all he sees for what feels like an eternity. When a boy splashes near him, trying in vain to reach the relative safety of Aeolos’ only salvation, he doesn’t think twice; he _shoves_ the boy away with a yelp, slapping his hands over his ears as the boy’s shrieks heighten in volume, the sound shrill and reverberating inside his head. It’s all he hears, all he sees, even as his little plank floats unsteadily down the river, away from the boys who will be forgotten by everyone in the Abbey, but never by him, never by their heartbroken families. 

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up (when had he fallen asleep? how did he not fall into the water?), he vaguely realizes he’s nearing Dunwall. The city is dreary. An overcast day. The chill seeps into his bones. At the age of thirteen (just turned, he’ll never forget this birthday), he's smart enough to know he’ll get sick if he stays on the river for much longer. His wet clothes cling to his body and even when he voids his bladder suddenly, the warmth disappears quickly.

He wants to go home.

He knows he’ll never make it back to Redmoor.

He only cries once he’s managed to jump off his plank onto the hard cement of the city. He takes a few steps up the stairs, then collapses into a pile, huddling to a ball and sobbing so loud, a City Watch guard peers over the ledge to see where the source of the cries are coming from. Luckily, the guard doesn’t approach.

 

* * *

 

Aeolos sleeps in the doorways of shops, in alleyways, in the sewers, and rarely, by the docks. But most of all, he stays near a flower shop in Draper’s Ward. It seems like a distant memory, his home, his parents, but he remembers his mother crouching down with him in her garden and pointing to every flower she grew, and taking him to the market and teaching him how to read all the names on the small packets of flower seeds, teaching him he doesn’t need to see all the colors of the rainbow to be a proper gardener. The one of the two people who work at the flower shop doesn’t seem very knowledgable on flowers at all, and sometimes he finds himself edging towards the displays set up outside and suggesting flowers for the men and women who want their bouquets to mean something special.

“The calla lily is the best choice for weddings, sir, oh yes. It means beauty and mag-- magif-- magnee--”

“Magnificence?” the man offers.

Aeolos nods. “And purity and innocence. Your wife will be so happy to see them.”

And like every time, the worker who doesn’t know much about flowers yells at him to get out, swatting at him with a newspaper and kicking at his legs until he’s running down the street, ducking into a nearby alley for cover. He waits until the ignorant worker walks back into the shop before creeping out again. Sometimes, if he smiles wide and looks pitiful enough, the rich people covered in fancy clothes and sparkling jewelry and smart hats give him some pocket change, all of which goes safely in the pockets of the neat clothes he’s stolen from unattended shopping bags. He only wears them when he comes to the flower shop, so they stay as clean as possible.

Home still occupies his thoughts. 

 

* * *

 

The other worker, Alice, catches him on a pleasantly sunny day.

“Oh yes, the hydrangeas are a perfect way to show your lady how much you love her,” the worker who doesn’t know much about flowers, who Aeolos has come to know as Baxter, is saying to a young man.

The man is about to pay when Aeolos clears his throat, brows furrowed with frustration. How did Baxter even get this job? “No, sir, no! Hydrangeas are for saying thank you. Lilacs are better, if she’s your first love. Ah, oh! Lillies too, and a’course roses--”

“ _Get out!_ ” Baxter shouts, shoving Aeolos’ shoulder hard enough to send him toppling over, hitting the ground hard. The customer stares between the two of them, eyes wide.

“D-don’t get the hydrangeas!” he squeaks, inching away from Baxter who’s already got his rolled up newspaper in hand. “It can also mean being cold and heartless!”

“What’s all this shouting! Sir, is everything alright? Are you-- _Baxter!_ ” A woman in a bandana and apron hurries out from the shop, her expression ranging from bewildered, to concerned, to outright furious. “You leave that child alone!” She yanks Baxter away from Aeolos by the collar, all but throwing him back into the shop. “Sir, I’m terribly sorry,” she turns to the customer, who’s been watching the entire scene in a state of shock. “I’ll be right with you. What kind of flowers did you have in mind?”

“I-I-- uh, the boy, he said-- I wanted something to show my girlfriend that I love her,” he stammers, twisting his hat over in his hands. “The man said hydrangeas would do the trick, but-- the boy said no.”

An exasperated expression creases Alice’s features as she helps Aeolos to his feet, brushing dust and leaves from his clothes. “A little boy knows flowers better than my own employee,” she says. He thinks she intended to say it to herself, but he and the man hear it clear as day.

“He said something about lilacs,” the man offers, looking like he’d much rather just leave altogether. Aeolos doesn’t blame him. He isn’t sure why he always comes here himself. Baxter has given him a number of bruises and once, even sent the City Watch after him. But no guard wastes their time trying to find a street kid after they can’t find them after a good fifteen minutes. They never think to look up at the pipes on the sides of buildings.

“Right again, little one,” she says, looking down at Aeolos. He gives her a small smile. “I ought to hire you and kick out Baxter. The man doesn’t know his sweet peas from his tulips.”

As Alice gets a proper bouquet together for the man, Aeolos settles down on a overturned pot and watches the people go by. He wonders what he’s going to do for dinner, he wonders if anyone will give him any spare coins today, he wonders if Alice really will hire him. It’s such a silly, fairy tale-like thought that Aeolos starts laughing. The man is long gone by the time he stops for breath. Alice is looking at him, her hands on her hips, head cocked to the side.

“And what has you in a such state, hm?”

“Oh, ma’am,” he wipes away a stray tear, holding his stomach. His mouth hurts from smiling so much. His gaze slides off her and lands on nothing in particular a ways off. “I was just thinkin’ about what you said. Hirin’ me and kickin’ out Baxter. It was a nice, funny thing to say.”

There’s a rustle, then Alice is crouching down beside him, turning his face so his brown eyes meet her deep dark ones. He wonders, distantly, if this is the kind of dark that color the Outsider’s eyes. “If you can show me you can handle your own in the shop and nothing goes missing, it won’t be so much of a joke.”

He isn’t entirely sure if he’s hearing her right. He stares at her, dumbfounded. Her reassuring smile reminds him of his mother. His stomach flips and he turns his head sharply, staring hard at the ground.

“Won’t be stealing nothin’, ma’am. I can’t eat flowers.”

She laughs, lifting him from under his arms. She carries him to the shop and, in a daze, the ensuing argument between her and Baxter seems so far away. More than anything, he wishes he could go home. Does his mother miss him? Did his father come back from sailing on his ship, only to see that his only son was taken by the Abbey? Do they think he’s dead or do they look for him among faceless, brainwashed overseers that walk the streets? 

 

* * *

 

Aeolos gets the job the very next day. He doesn’t remember doing anything special for it (he’s clumsy with arranging bouquets neatly and with the proper color choice and seems to only be good at picking out the flowers with correct meaning for whatever occasion the customers need them for), but he’s too surprised to respond much aside from a stuttered thank you.

Baxter roughs him up behind the flower shop after Alice tells them the news and Aeolos lingers outside even after he’s gone, trying not to press too hard against his bruised ribs. He regrets biting a chunk of out his skin. Maybe if he didn’t bite him, Baxter wouldn’t have tried to cave his ribs in.

The only thing that prompts him to move back into the shop is the angry rumble of thunder overhead. He doesn’t want to get sick, no matter how much it hurts to move, how it feels like each breath is another well aimed kick to his sides. He’s seen sick kids. A kid who’d been sharing an alley with him came down with a cold, just a simple cold, coughing and snuffling, nothing that seemed too bad, but when he woke up one morning, the kid had gone ice cold and stiff. An older child had kicked at him a few times, then, when he didn’t move an inch, declared that the boy was dead. Aeolos doesn’t want to end up dead from a cold or something even worse. Pneumonia, the flu, whooping cough. There’s so many diseases out there. He doesn’t want to be another dead kid in an alley, looted and thrown into the ever expanding sea.

“Little one!” The worry in Alice’s voice is almost tangible. Aeolos leans heavily against the doorframe, hugging himself loosely, trying to blink away the tears that just keep falling. “What happened, who did this?”

She already knows, he thinks, by the way her expression darkens not a moment after she asks. She helps him into a chair by the counter and hurries off to the backroom for what he can only assume will help the pain. He wants to close his eyes and sleep for a long, long time. He’s been awfully stupid to think someone like him could ever have anything nice. Not him, not someone who should be dead, someone who the Abbey considers a failure, maybe even a heretic, if they learned he survived, if they even remember his little face among the twenty or so they left to die in the river.

He wants to go home.

 

* * *

 

Baxter is banned from the shop. Aeolos is given a small closet to sleep in during the colder, wetter days. He can’t push away the feeling that this isn’t meant to last.

 

* * *

 

“Can you spell? I need to make a nametag for you.”

He nods. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a-e-o-l-o-s.”

Alice nods, humming as she writes his name on his brand new name tag. She leans down to pin it neatly onto his shirt. “Aeolos?” She says it like ee-o-lis.

“Ey-aw-los.” He pronounces it slowly.

“That’s quite a name you have.” She says it in a way that’s different from the mean way the street kids say it. Her voice holds no malice. Still, he shrugs, rubbing his still sore ribs.

“My mother gave it to me.”

 

* * *

 

When he’s not working (which is a lot of the time), he wanders the back alleys of the city. Staying in Draper’s Ward all the time isn’t the best idea on the nicest of days, so he wanders down, down to the riversides (where, if he stares too long at the water’s surface, will turn black, he’ll see the little faces peering up from the depths and the screaming, god, the _screaming_ , it will never stop haunting his dreams), to Kaldwin’s bridge. He walks with his head down, hands shoved into his pockets. He swipes coins from pouches when the crowds are thick, avoids the brothels. Sometimes, he takes to climbing the pipes up to the rickety balconies of the apartments. Sometimes the inhabitants notice him and start screaming at him to get out. Sometimes it’s just another kid who’s home and they don’t bother him too much. He’s not here to rob the house, after all. He’s just sitting on the balcony for a rest. It feels safer being above the streets. 

 

* * *

 

Once, he makes the mistake of climbing into Baxter’s apartment. Aeolos hears the man before he sees him and ducks under a desk, heart beating hard against his ribcage that still aches even weeks after the beating. He covers his mouth with his hand and shuts his eyes tight. He hears a door open, then close. The unmistakable sound of liquid hitting a porcelain bowl.

Aeolos flees the apartment as fast as he can and runs and runs and _runs_ until he can’t breathe and his legs feel like they’re going to collapse under him. 

 

* * *

 

He still has nightmares of the river. In those dreams, the fish get him. His plank overturns and they eat him slowly. All their screams become one note. No one comes to save them. 

 

* * *

 

In another dream, it’s not the fish who get him. Hands as pale as death drag him under the surface. He can see black eyes and pale faces and hear the crying of whales before the sea swallows him up, and all is silent. 

 

* * *

 

It’s been two years.

Tonight is the start of Fugue Feast and he keeps seeing dark figures running across the roofs. He thinks it’s his eyes playing tricks on him. The first day of the feast, he thinks it’s because of the whiskey him and other street kids have been passing around. When he mentions it, the tallest of the group just laughs and takes the bottle from his hands. He doesn’t mention it again. 

 

* * *

 

The next night, he sees the figures again. Three of them, jumping across the roofs except it’s not possible. The gap between the houses is too big, anyone else would fall to their deaths (he’s heard about it, he’s seen it with his own eyes, black staining the cobblestones below). But the figures are on one roof one second, then the next they’re on the other roof. He doesn’t understand.

Aeolos climbs the pipes up to the roof, perches by the edge to watch the figures disappear into wisps of dark ash. 

 

* * *

 

The third night he decides to follow them. He packs his only bag with his blanket and food and goes off. If he doesn’t make it back, well, Alice can always find another street kid to train. He likes her, he thinks she’s the nicest adult after his mother, but staying by her makes him feel out of place, even after all this time. He doesn’t belong in the ritzy, glamorous neighborhoods that line Draper’s Ward and the Estate District. Even if she pays him in a small amount of coin and food. Good things like that aren’t meant to last. But this? He can do this.

He follows the figures from the streets. When the biggest figure stops and peers into a window of a mansion, he hides behind a dumpster to watch them. They’re all wearing long coats, the biggest person wearing a bright red one, not unlike the High Overseer. The person is definitely not the High Overseer--he has hair, for one thing, and he thinks the way they’ve been going across the roofs is witchcraft. By the Outsider, what’s he gotten himself into?

He hears a _whoosh_ of ash, smells something otherworldly, then someone shoves him roughly to the ground. In the lights streaming out of the mansion windows, he can make out the other two smaller figures, glaring down at him with distrustful eyes. They can’t be all that much older than he is, but they look much tougher, like they could do the job of kicking his ribs in, unlike Baxter. His breath rattles in his chest.

“Master, he was following us,” the one behind him hisses to the one in the red coat. He’s holding Aeolos’ collar in a vicegrip. “What do you want us to do with him?”

“Make sure he doesn’t leave. I’ll be done in a moment,” the master answers, his voice accented and like gravel. He’s never heard anything like it before. Aeolos shivers. The master disappears, leaving the three of them alone in the cool night. The sounds of festivities can be heard from every house in the area. Just enough noise that no one will hear a kid screaming for help. As if anyone in this part of town would care about a street kid anywhere (as if anyone _anywhere_ would care about another dead kid). Especially during the Fugue Feast, no one is going to care. These people won’t be responsible for anything they do to him. Time doesn’t exist this week.

“P-please,” he stammers, acutely aware of the boy standing directly behind him. He hasn’t been able to get a good look at him and whenever he tries to turn his head, the boy yanks him by the hair. All he can see is right in front of him, at the other boy. His half lidded grey eyes don’t hold malice, but Aeolos can’t be certain if either of them are going to do anything while they wait for their master to return.

“Don’t speak,” the boy with the grey eyes says. “We won’t hurt you, not unless Master says to.”

Aeolos wants to cry but he doesn’t allow himself to. Not yet. He squeezes his eyes shut. The minutes feel like hours. His knees hurt from the pebbles and bits of glass digging through his pants. He should not have left the questionable safety of his alley. These mysterious people who disappear into ash and reappear wherever they please would have never known he existed if he had just stayed there. He’s stupid, he’s so, so stupid. These two years have been borrowed time and he’s thrown it all away by following these people. They must work for the Outsider, he thinks desperately as he hears the whispers of ash right beside him. The Abbey says such horrible things about heretics who give themselves over to the Outsider, that terrible deity who causes the world to go wrong and corrupts everything it touches. If he had anything to pray to, he’d pray for them to not use their powers to hurt him too much, make whatever punishment they have to offer quick.

 

* * *

 

The Master in the red coat stands in his line of vision. The boy behind him still holds him firmly in place.

“What did you see?”

Aeolos blinks back tears. Should he be honest? Will honesty get him in more trouble or should he lie? The longer he hesitates, the tighter he feels the grip on his hair become.

“O-on the roofs, like… like you were in one place one second then in another place the next. I-I was only jus’... just curious, I didn’t mean-- please, sir, I won’t tell anyone, I just saw-- I wanted to-- I--” He trips over his words, not even sure if anything he’s said makes any sense at all. The Master’s face doesn’t change. It’s not particularly angry looking, he doesn’t look like he wants to kill Aeolos, but he doesn’t look very friendly either.

Aeolos notices the Master’s blade at his side is covered in blood. He starts to cry and he can’t stop.

The boy holding him shoves at him again, suddenly and rougher than the last time and stomps off a few steps away.

“He’s just some shitty kid who followed us! Throw him in the river before he sends the overseers after us and let’s go home!” He shouts, fed up.

“He’s scared, Javi,” the other boy says. He peers up at the Master. “And no one cares during the Fugue Feast. What should we do, Master Daud?”

Daud is quiet for sometime, long enough that Aeolos has the sense to gaze up at him through teary eyes. Daud kneels down, taking in the boy’s expression, his rumpled clothes, his lack of shoes, his honey blond hair and light complexion. He’s just another street kid.

“What’s your name?”

“Aeolos…” he manages, choking on his sobs and wiping at his eyes. Panic threatens to overtake him. Not in the river, please, never again, _no_ . “Please don’t--don’t throw me in--in--! Not again, _please_ \--”

“Again?” the not-angry boy echoes.

“No one is throwing you in the river. I have a proposition for you.”

Aeolos doesn’t understand. Aren’t they going to kill him, drown him in the Wrenhaven River and turn the river black black black like all those boys? But Daud’s voice still doesn’t sound angry. By now, if he was with the other kids, there’d be a knife between his ribs, or a thousand fists coming at him from all sides. None of that comes. There’s no cold rush of water or hagfish trying to eat him. There’s just a cool night’s air, the low chatter coming from the open windows of the mansion beside them, fireworks popping and crackling far off in the distance, and the angry incoherent muttering from the boy behind him.

“Wh-- huh?”

“Take a deep breath.” Daud’s voice is calm. Aeolos takes several deep breaths, wiping his cheeks with his sleeves. Tears still roll down his cheeks and blur his vision and his head feels like it’s swimming, but the breaths are helping. Deep breaths, in and out. “Like that, good. Alright, listen carefully, Aeolos. I can teach you how to move through the air like us. I can take you off the streets and share this with you.” He pulls off one of his gloves and, right on his hand, is the mark the Abbey told them all to fear. “I won’t offer this again. If you decline, I’ll make sure you don’t remember this.”

He isn’t sure he wants to know what that’s supposed to mean. It could either mean he’ll be knocked upside the head hard enough to mess with his memory or he’ll be killed. Or maybe something else entirely. Does the Outsider gift people with the ability to take away memories as well?

He isn’t crying as heavily anymore and he wipes at his eyes a few more times, sniffling. The man before him doesn’t look all that kind, but Aeolos thinks that might just be the way his face is. His eyes are a steely grey and his dark hair is combed back neatly. The not-angry boy is peering over Daud’s shoulder, rocking a little on his heels. The distrust in his eyes has melted away to curiosity, and his short, odd colored hair is tousled by the breeze. He doesn’t dare to look behind him and instead, lets his gaze drift down to the mark on Daud’s hand.

He hesitates, swallowing hard, and reaches out to touch it with the tips of his fingers.

There’s no visible spark. The overseers don’t appear, swords ready, hounds snarling. The Outsider itself doesn’t show up, sending the world topsy-turvy, no whales singing their mournful songs. All that happens is a deep shiver that goes through his entire body.

He gasps, clutching his hand to his chest. What could really happen if he goes with Daud and his boys? The worst is this could be is a trap (but it can’t be, it can’t be because if that mark is just really just a tattoo when what was that shiver? how could daud and his boys go across the roofs like that if it isn’t Outsider magic? daud can’t be fooling him, his gut isn’t telling him to run anymore), but if this is real then maybe, he’ll have a place he belongs. It’s a farfetched thought and it makes him shiver again, makes his breaths come short and he distantly hears Daud instructing him to breathe again, but for some reason, it doesn’t feel as impossible of a thought as spending the rest of his days sleeping in the little backroom of Alice’s flower shop and being forced to call that a home. Alice is nice but she still reminds him too much of his mother, and yet nothing at all. He’ll never have a place in her world.

But maybe he can have a place in Daud’s world.

“I accept.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Aeolos has red-green color blindess, specifically called protanopia. For him, red appears as black, and certain shades of orange, yellow, and green appear as yellow.  
> 2\. Javi is short for Javier.  
> 3\. When Aeolos meets Daud and the two boys, he is 15, Daud is 25, and Javier and Malon are both 17. I had to fiddle with the ages a few times because the Outsider takes his sweet time marking Daud and I wanted to have a couple of whalers who are nearer to Daud in age.  
> So if Aeolos sounds a bit younger than he should be, I'm sorry about that. I ended up just keeping some stuff and chalking it up to a minor speech impediment and him coming from a poor family, not having access to schooling or anything. Daud ends up helping with that though. And he's pretty short for his age, until his growth spurt. Then he's one of the tallest whalers.  
> 4\. I don't know anything about flowers and got all the meanings from a website!
> 
> leaving a kudos or a comment is greatly appreciated it! if i made any mistakes here, please let me know. i also take requests, mainly for daud and the whalers, as well as some miscellaneous citizens of dunwall, corvo, and emily.


End file.
